Most Parents Want Their Kids Back In The Classroom. Fewer Agree On The COVID-19 Safety Measures.
After more than a year of distance learning, many school-age children in the U.S. have gone back to the classroom. And while the highly transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus certainly triggers mixed feelings about kids’ returning to school, parents have maintained for the most part that they prefer in-person learning, at least some of the time, to the entirely remote, virtual learning that took place largely online during the past school year.
The debate over whether students and educators must adhere to certain safety protocols to make in-person learning possible, though, is just the latest political battle concerning COVID-19. A week ago in Florida, a judge ruled that schools could mandate mask ordinances despite Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s objections. And on Monday, the U.S. Department of Education said it had opened civil rights investigations into five states that banned schools’ mask mandates to examine whether these policies were placing students with disabilities and underlying health conditions at a heightened risk of contracting COVID-19. Recent surveys underscore just how large the divide is among parents over whether students and teachers should have to wear masks or be vaccinated — assuming, in the case of students, that they are old enough to get the jab. Much of that tension, though, may have less to do with how parents identify politically and more to do with whether they’ve been vaccinated.
In February, before the delta variant had begun to spread, support for in-person schooling was incredibly high. According to a Gallup poll conducted that month, over three-quarters of parents of K-12 students (79 percent) said they supported “providing in-person schooling for elementary and secondary students” in their neighborhoods. Support cut across party lines, too: 94 percent of Republicans, 80 percent of independents and 62 percent of Democrats said they were in favor of in-person schooling. Since then, however, other polls have shown that support among parents has dipped, although in-person and hybrid learning are still relatively popular options. Most parents just aren’t up for completely virtual learning, and even fewer support homeschooling, according to Morning Consult polling from late August. For the past six months, the pollster has asked parents of 5- to 18-year-olds what they believe the best model is for K-12 students this school year, and the latest numbers showed that 36 percent preferred in-person instruction only, while 37 percent wanted a hybrid model. Only 16 percent said they wanted entirely virtual learning, and just 7 percent said they wanted to homeschool their children.
Parents see less eye-to-eye, though, on which COVID-19 safety precautions to take in schools. Per an August survey from the Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 31 percent of unvaccinated adults versus 71 percent of vaccinated ones said they favored mask requirements for teachers. Those numbers barely budged when respondents were asked whether students should be required to wear masks: 29 percent of unvaccinated adults and 69 percent of vaccinated ones said face coverings should be mandatory for school-age children — many of whom are not yet old enough to get the vaccine.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-parents-want-their-kids-back-in-the-classroom-fewer-agree-on-the-covid-19-safety-measures/
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